60 Seconds ago in a country called Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey were just Being Human. Then - and make sure you Don't Tell the Bride about this - My Brother the Islamist, who got a pretty Bad Education when he was growing up, asked them if they wanted to play Snog Marry Avoid? ...but they rejected him.
I told him not to worry about Him and Her, because they had reasons for their rejection. Gavin, for example, was just on his way to see his American Dad! (he takes pride in being a Family Guy), whilst Stacey was about to visit a pyrotechnics nature reserve near her house, called Torchwood. Once there, by-the-by, Stacey plans to incite a fast-moving political movement to stop a national treasure of a TV channel being essentially cancelled. Don't worry if you can't be there to see it, because The Revolution Will Be Televised... but only on your computer.
On the sixth of March 2014, BBC Director-General Tony Hall p***ed off quite a lot of people. He announced that BBC Three, the channel aimed at 16 to 35 year olds but in reality claiming a range of viewers encompassing pre-pubescents and those perhaps at the zeniths of their midlife crises, would be moved off-air and its programmes would become produced solely for BBC iPlayer.
Which is outrageous.
BBC Three has won 35 awards in its 11 year existence, including seven BAFTAs. This outstrips the number of awards won during the entire combined 25 year lifetime of six other main channels, including Sky1, Comedy Central and Channel 5.
Which is exceptional.
The channel has raised aloft and sometimes catapulted to further success - amid bouts of chuckling and the occasional split of the side -
- a long-distance relationship between a bloke from Essex and an excitable blonde from Barry Island
- a sketch show of such quotability that many school teachers probably once questioned their male pupils' sexuality, upon finding them prancing around the playground repeatedly elaborating that "I'm a lady"
- an American cartoon that everybody knows is the grown-up version of, and probably a bit better than, The Simpsons
- the tribulations of a bomb-disposal team in Afghanistan
- and a sensationally lazy couple laying-about in a dirty flat.
Which are hilarious.
The co-existence of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost in a small accommodation was also exhibited to the nation via BBC Three, as was a series of politically satirical practical jokes that managed to win a BAFTA for illuminating, in unorthodox fashion, the country's youth of democracy's many complexities and contradictions. The news of every day, every week, every year are also presented to viewers on the channel: not through some elaborate hour-long service, though, but in a unique, unprecedented sixty second format that makes current events manageable and the person discovering them instantly knowledgeable.
Which are insightful.
Perhaps I'm being a tad melodramatically sentimental: the channel hasn't been totally cancelled, after all. It's just been told where to go - the internet - and the viewers of the channel have been patronisingly expected to blindly follow. But follow we shall do with eyes very open (and reluctantly directed at a computer monitor). For us, the internet is for drinking pints of attention-seekingly vile concoctions, six second videos for our apparently minute attention-span's amusement and... well, that which requires InPrivate Browsing.
It might also be worth pointing out to someone at the BBC that all televisions are - funnily enough - designed to smoothly exhibit television programmes, whereas many computers are designed to take three excruciating millennia to buffer a ten second YouTube clip of a cat falling off a fence. We want to sit on a sofa when staying up until half eleven to see the hilarity of Peter Griffin, not a swivel-chair.
If BBC Three has practically gone, then, what about the replacement channels - the former competitors? The Inbetweeners and Misfits were admittedly immensely popular and of BAFTA-winning quality respectively, but is the mediocre American sitcom-infested E4 really a viable alternative to BBC Three?
What about ITV2? Does the entire youth of this country fancy spending their TV time perusing the infantile antics of Keith Lemon on Celebrity Juice? That was a rhetorical question, of course, but if one were to answer it the only sane and sensible response would be the word 'no', followed by an expletive coupled with the word 'off'.
The British Broadcasting Corporation needs to make cuts, fine. But maybe they could start by making a sizeable reduction from Michael McIntyre's wages of £81,000 an episode for The Michael McIntyre Chat Show, for example - paid for the sole reason that he can remind the public of how unbearably middle-class he is - or (now here's a thought!) maybe they could stop paying off senior executives with £25,000,000 of the licence-fee payers' money.
But then again... it is only TV; maybe all of the 16 to 35 year olds in Britain could just read a book instead?